TUESDAY, 28 JUNE 2011
AT 10.00 AM
COMMITTEE ROOM 1, CAMDEN TOWN HALL,
JUDD STREET, LONDON, WC1H 9JE
(All welcome!)
17. PINKHAM WAY UPDATE:
This report provides an update on current legislative, policy and strategy developments that are relevant to the NLWA, and seeks delegated authority for officers to make representations and responses to consultations, in line with the approaches set out in this paper.
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| Link to 'Pinkham Way' agenda item report |
SUMMARY OF REPORT:
This report brings Members up to date on the Authority’s joint outline planning application with LB Barnet, for the development of the Pinkham Way site. It notes the submission of the application on 31st May 2011, provides an outline of the proposals, and describes the next steps.
1.1. The Authority has bought from LB Barnet part of the former Friern Barnet Sewage Treatment Works as a site on which bidders can propose to build waste management capacity for the Authority’s long-term needs within the main procurement. LB Barnet has kept part of the site to build a depot for its waste services and passenger transport fleets. The Authority has agreed to lead on the submission of a joint outline planning application for the development of the site for these purposes as part of the terms of the sale and purchase agreement with LB Barnet.
1.2. Within the Authority’s agreed outline business case (OBC) the reference project showed a mechanical and biological treatment and transfer facility could be built at this site as one of three key sites for treatment facilities in north London. The OBC has been one of the principal building blocks of the Authority’s instructions to bidders within the main procurement, and their ‘outline solution’ submissions that were considered by Members in April 2011.
1.3. Securing planning permissions for new waste facilities is normally the responsibility of the ultimately successful bidder for any such main procurement, but is a process that can take some considerable time and carries risks associated with delay. Delays in the delivery of facilities and services that contribute to the diversion of wastes from landfill can be very expensive, as the landfill tax is currently £56 per tonne and is rising at £8 per tonne per year at least until 2014/15 when it will be £80 per tonne.
... 3.2. The application is in outline because it is not yet possible to define the facility in detail whilst the main procurement work is still underway, and, although it is anticipated that detailed planning work would start once a preferred bidder was announced, to wait until this work had been completed would cause delay to the construction of the waste facility and the subsequent diversion of waste from landfill. This diversion will be required both to comply with the Landfill Directive and to reduce the Authority’s landfill tax liabilities.
... 3.7. Finally it has a statement of community engagement that sets out in full the above pre-application consultation and other stakeholder engagement already undertaken.
... 4.2. LB Haringey will manage a consultation process that is expected to include a Development Forum, a public meeting at which interested parties can come to learn more about the proposals from the Authority and Barnet, and ask any questions they may have of the joint applicants or LB Haringey as the planning authority. There may also be a tour of a similar waste facility(ies) elsewhere for representatives of interested groups.
4.3. There is also the possibility of intervention by the London Mayor if he believes the application to be of a sufficiently strategic nature that it should not be left to local decision-makers.
... 4.6. It should also be noted that there is significant local opposition to the outline planning application. Most notably this has been through the Pinkham Way Alliance, but many individual residents have written to the Authority and LB Barnet expressing their concerns and/or opposition.
4.7. Officers have engaged where possible with these people, and the Chair has written to local newspapers, but it is expected that this opposition will continue throughout LB Haringey’s consultation process, and possibly beyond when ‘reserved matters’ proposals are brought forward for the depot and/or the waste facility. In the meantime it is for the Authority and LB Barnet as joint applicants to seek to persuade people of the need for and reasonableness of the joint outline planning application, and for Haringey as local planning authority to evaluate and decide on the relative merits of the various cases put to them for and against our proposals.
4.8. For the Authority, the case for the development in general terms of need is that such social infrastructure is essential for all communities. The landfilling of residual wastes outside of London cannot continue because (a) the landfill sites are filling up, (b) the Landfill Directive requires us to significantly reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste we send to landfill (or be heavily fined – ultimately at local tax-payers’ expense), and (c) the landfill tax escalator is making landfill prohibitively expensive. Now that it is becoming necessary to build more treatment facilities for residual wastes, the communities outside of London where the landfill sites are (as a result of former clay-pits and quarries) are no longer willing to receive our wastes, which is part of the reason why the London Plan requires increasing self-sufficiency for wastes in London, and why the North London Waste Plan has been developed by our constituent borough councils in their separate capacities as local planning authorities.
4.9. The Authority is already proposing to develop new waste treatment capacity at sites in Edmonton (LB Enfield); and Hendon (LB Barnet) and has its waste transfer station in Islington, meaning that there will be a distribution of sites across North London, with no single site or area having to receive all North London’s waste. The Pinkham Way site also offers a strategically central site for residual waste treatment into which several boroughs can sensibly deliver wastes directly, thereby making their collection services as operationally and cost efficient as possible.
4.10. Clearly in North London it is difficult to find a site that has the above benefits, that is of a size that is suitable for a cost-effective residual waste treatment site, that is a long distance away from anyone, that has reasonable planning prospects, and that the owner is willing to sell, but it is nevertheless essential that the Authority does provide means of diverting increasing wastes from landfill.
4.11. In purchasing part of the Pinkham Way site from LB Barnet, the Authority took the view that this was a suitable site due to its size, strategic location, access from non-residential roads, relative distance from people (shielded by the buffers of the A406 and retail park to the north, the railway and light industrial area to the east, the golf course to the south and the park to the west), planning history as the Friern Barnet Sewage Works and its availability.
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